Snowflakez;n10661701 said:
Thanks for the information! I have two questions, actually... First, how difficult was it to install a custom loop? Second, are temps usually better than top-tier air coolers? I have one of the better air coolers on the market currently, the Noctua NH-D15. As long as a custom loop isn't a 60-hour ordeal and it will keep things cooler than my current fan setup, I'm happy. For reference, if it's important, my new system is as follows. EVGA GTX 1080 FTW2 ASUS TUF Z370-PLUS Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 3000MHz Intel i7 8700K (not OCed yet) EVGA 650W PSU, believe it was a 650B. Nothing too special. Noise is actually not a big concern for me. I use a decent pair of headphones so all I usually hear is a low hum, which I find soothing more than annoying. Still, I'm all for silence as long as it fits my other two criteria.
As far as difficulty, certain parts are really easy, and other parts can be a little more 'worrisome'. Hooking up the radiator, the reservoir, the tubing, and clamps is all REALLY easy. I mean literally you're just screwing the barbs into the mounting holes and then putting the tubing on them followed by hose clamps (super simple - all you need is a basic screwdriver for that). The part that can be hectic is mounting the block on your GPU / CPU. It's not that it's 'difficult' as again you're just using a screwdriver and carefully lining things up and screwing them on, it's that in the back of your mind, you're going to be a little worried, thinking what if something goes wrong, etc.
I've been doing this for upwards of 15-20 years now, and even last year when I was installing fullcover EK waterblocks on 7-day old 1080 Ti cards, there's a part of me that's a little nervous during that installation as I'm literally taking $1400 worth of GPUs completely apart and mounting waterblocks on them. Everything went smooth, as I took my time, but I can see that being a little 'disconcerting' for anyone. My advice there is just take your time, one step at a time, and don't panic. A number of companies these days actually sell cards with pre-mounted waterblocks which is a good option as well if you want to avoid the custom installation of the block. I know EVGA & MSI both sell waterblocked versions of some of their cards which is a good way to go. I actually did that with my Titan X Maxwell cards before the 1080Ti models - I bought two of the EVGA Titan X Hydro Copper model which came with an EK block already mounted and that made installation a piece of cake + the cards are warrantied through the manufacturer if you were to have any issues. CPU installs are, IMO, easier than GPUs because you don't have to worry about the rest of the card when you're doing the CPU - there's no attached memory, VRMs, etc. that you have to be wary of - the downside to a CPU install though is you'll generally have to pull the motherboard in order to mount the backplate for the waterblock. Sometimes it's helpful to have an assistant to just hold things in place for you while you're bolting things in.
You'll definitely want to block out some time for a full switchover from air to water - in your case if your doing a CPU & GPU switchover, that'll take some time - you'll have to pull the stock coolers off, and then figure out all the details on where you want to locate everything as far as your pump, reservoir, radiator(s), etc. and how you want your loop to look and run.
As far as cooling - generally, yes. I haven't run an air cooler on any of my CPUs since probably around ~2002 and CPUs these days generate a ton more heat than they did back then, but I would imagine liquid cooling will still net you a significant gain over the best air coolers (would be worth doing more research though just to confirm). I have a 6850k (stock clocks) that, this time of year, loads around 35-40* C while playing Witcher 3. In summer when the temps are a good 10-15 degrees hotter in my house, it'll load around 40-45*C playing Witcher 3. Not sure what kind of temps you are seeing with yours, but I think you'd probably still see some good gains - and remember I've got (2) 1080Ti cards in the same loop with my 6850k heating the water up, too.
The video cards usually run around ~45*C this time of year, and ~55*C in the summer - and that's with conservative fan settings on my radiators - if I see temps start to go into the 60s on the GPUs I have a fan controller I just spool up and that brings them back down. It all comes down to how aggressive you want to be with the fans. You could install some fans that move some crazy volumes of air (but will be really loud) to keep things super cool all the time - it just comes down to your noise tolerance. Since I like silence, I run my fans on the lowest possible settings that I can get away with to maintain silence but cool my equipment well enough so that stability is never even close to becoming an issue.
Hope that helps you out a little bit - switching to liquid isn't for everyone, but to me it sounded like you were semi interested by using the AIO cooler so figured I'd try to give you a nudge toward liquid, or even just to do a little more research into it and see if it might be right for you. If you're into lighting, some people use black lights and UV fluid in their loops to make the tubes glow. I switched over to liquid back around 2002 and haven't looked back. Can it be a pain in the a$$ if you run into an issue? ABSOLUTELY. So I don't want to downplay that, but I'll say it's a really neat feeling once you complete the conversion and get everything running. No noise, no heat-related stability issues, EVER (unless you're OCing), better overclocking (if you're into that) are all some really nice pros. I used to be pretty into overclocking, but for the past 8-10 years, I am just into silence and stability. My system never locks up or crashes from a heat-related incident. I mean NEVER. It's been a decade or more since I've had any problems that I've had to troubleshoot due to heat on either the GPU or CPU and that's a nice feeling.
Here's a pic of my rig too just for reference so you can see the general layout of it -